Giant In Business World Philip Crosby Dies At 75

August 20, 2001|By Rich McKay, Sentinel Staff Writer

WINTER PARK -- Into the stubborn heart of American industry satisfied with just so-so work, Philip B. Crosby drummed one message home: Do things right the first time. It's cheaper and it's better business.

In so doing, the one-time assembly-line worker born shortly before the Great Depression in Wheeling, W.Va., became the father of a quality-control revolution. Business professors say Crosby changed everything about the way Americans work.

Crosby, who made his home in Winter Park near the school -- Rollins College -- he loved so well, died early Sunday at Mission St. Joseph's Hospital in Asheville, N.C. He was 75.

The world-famous author and entrepreneur succumbed to complications of cancer while at his summer home in the North Carolina mountains, his family and friends said.

News of his death spread quickly among his business associates and especially among the faculty at Rollins, where he taught in the early 1960s. He lavished the school with gifts and scholarships after he built his fortune.

Professor Barry Render of Rollins College, Crosby's longtime friend and associate, described him as a true "giant.''

"He is credited with the term zero defect,'' Render said, coined at a time in the 1970s when American businesses were satisfied with mediocre work.

Just about all big businesses, from automakers to appliance makers, were entrenched in the idea that an imperfect product was expected, Render said.

Crosby came along and said, "You'll save all this money if you build it right the first time,'' Render said.

He preached that message for decades and wrote more than a dozen books, translated into 16 languages.

In 1979, he founded Philip Crosby Associates Inc., where he taught managers from all over the world. Later, he opened his Quality College, which now operates in 20 countries.

But it started in some space he rented at Rollins, said Rollins President Rita Bornstein.

"We loved Phil,'' she said. "He was an extraordinary friend to Rollins.''

He not only gave scholarships, he mentored students at the college's Crummer Graduate School of Business, she said. He even gave a life-sized statue of Benjamin Franklin to the school after Bornstein casually admired it at a social.

She said that the school will have a memorial service for Crosby soon.

His daughter Phylis Crosby described her father as a "truly generous and compassionate man'' who gave not only his wealth but gave himself to others.

"He was all those nice things that people say and more,'' she said. "He revolutionized the business world. He was also a Christian, and we believe he is going to an eternal home.''